Thread of Hope jt-1

by Jeff Shelby

  “It all?”

  She shoved a forkful of lettuce into her mouth, chewed and nodded. “When she filed the complaint against Winslow.”

  “You didn’t buy it?” I asked.

  “Wasn’t about buying it,” she said. “I was stunned that she’d be the kid in the middle of something like this.” She laid her fork down. “I don’t know what it was like when you went here, but I’ll bet it was different. These kids? They don’t act fifteen. They act like yuppies. A lot of the girls date college guys. Seems like they all drive cars that are worth what most people would like to put down on a home. Dress like they’re always going clubbing and that’s because, half the time, they are going clubbing.” She picked up the fork again. “So I’m not surprised that a girl at Coronado might get mixed up in something. I was just surprised that it was Meredith.”

  “Did you believe her?” I picked up my sandwich but didn't take a bite.

  She hesitated, pursed her lips, then nodded. “At first, yeah. Like I said, she’s a sharp kid. No bullshit in her, you know? I know her better than Winslow, so I immediately believed her.”

  “Chuck wouldn’t hurt a kid,” I said, feeling the need to get it out there as to where I stood.

  “After I talked to him, I believed that, too,” she said. “They both seemed like they were telling the truth. So I don’t have a clue as to what happened.”

  “Were they close? Chuck and Meredith?”

  She picked at the lettuce with her fork. “Yeah. But he was good with all of the girls. He’s this giant, good-looking guy who can play. He’s like a god to them. They immediately gravitated toward him.” She set her elbows on the table and jabbed at the air with the fork. “And he could coach. Didn’t matter the position. He knew how to teach.”

  It again surprised me to hear that about him. I never saw him as a mentor. It made me want to see him doing that in action. And somewhere in those thoughts, I felt a twinge of guilt because maybe I had missed some change in Chuck’s life.

  “And Meredith’s one of those kids who never wants to quit playing,” Kelly continued. “Always wants to shoot after practice, always wants to work out a little more. From day one, Winslow was willing to stick around and work with her. I stuck around, too, at first, to make sure things were cool.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “An older male in a gym with teenage girls,” she said, as if it was a no-brainer. “A guy I didn’t really know. I needed to be comfortable with that. After I watched him for a week or so, I was. No problem at all with it.” She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, thinking. “But they were spending a lot of time together.

  My conversation with Jon Jordan flashed back through my head. “Stricker told me that he OK'd Chuck’s hiring after Jordan recommended him. Did Jordan know him?

  “No. He did that as a favor,” she explained. “It kind of went roundabout. A friend of mine recommended Winslow to me. After I met him, I wanted him, but it’s hard to get someone who doesn’t teach here on the coaching staff. They like everyone to be on campus full-time. I knew I needed an extra push. So I went back to my friend and asked her to get Jordan to make a phone call.”

  “Your friend knew both Chuck and Jordan?

  “Yeah. She actually works for Jordan. Not sure how she and Chuck met.”

  “Can I ask her name?”

  Kelly took a drink and set the glass on the table. “She’s Jon Jordan’s bodyguard. Gina Coleman.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Gina intimated knowing Chuck when she’d laid me out in Jon Jordan’s driveway, but she hadn’t explained. I was officially confused.

  “Gina and I have been friends for a long time,” Kelly explained. “She said she knew this guy, that he knew basketball and that he might be able to help. She knew I was looking for a volunteer assistant.”

  “Any idea how they knew each other?” I said, thoroughly mystified at what I was hearing.

  “Isn’t Winslow your buddy?”A confused grin spread across her face.

  “Yes.” I didn't offer anything else.

  She waited, then shrugged. “Gina said they went to school together. A long time ago.”

  It would have been before high school, I thought. I’d met him freshman year.

  None of that was making sense so I switched gears.

  “How long have you known Gina?” I asked.

  “Since high school, up in Orange County,” she said. “We played ball together. We both came down here for college and stuck around.”

  “What did she do before she worked for Jordan?”

  Kelly pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I’ll talk about Winslow. I’m not going to talk about Gina. She’s a friend and you can ask her yourself.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Bottom line. You’ve spent time with both Chuck and Meredith. Who do you believe?”

  “I told you. I don’t know.”

  “Make a choice. Go with your gut. Who’s telling the truth?”

  Kelly shifted in the booth, like she was trying to get comfortable and couldn’t find the right spot. “If I have to choose, I choose Meredith.”

  My stomach sank. “Why?”

  She thought about that for a long moment before she answered. “I’m not sure. Chuck looked me in the eye and denied it. Didn’t get outraged, didn’t throw a tantrum, no dramatics. Just looked me in the eye and said he didn’t do anything to Meredith. It seemed genuine.” She looked away for a moment, her eyes searching the diner. She brought them back to me. “But there was something in Meredith. Hurt, pain, I don’t know. I don’t think she was lying.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it forced me to start thinking about everything from a different perspective. I could keep saying that Chuck wasn’t capable of doing the things he was being accused of, but if I was going to figure out what happened, I was going to have to admit to at least one thing. These people had been around Chuck a lot more than I had in the previous few years. And I needed to start listening to what they were saying.

  “I know why Chuck would lie,” I said, the words feeling funny as they came off my tongue. “No one would want to admit doing that. But why would Meredith lie?”

  “I don’t have an answer for that,” she said, looking genuinely confused. “Like I said before, it’s not like her.”

  Which put us right back where we started. Right smack in the middle of nowhere.

  She saw my frustration. “Sorry. It’s all I’ve got.” She looked at her watch. “I need to get going.”

  I looked at the check, threw some cash on the table and we walked outside. Fog shrouded the bridge, the muted lights casting an eery glow over the water.

  “Have you talked to him?” Kelly asked. “How’s he doing?”

  “Someone beat the shit out of him,” I said. “He’s in the hospital, unconscious. He’s a mess.”

  She stopped. “You’re serious?”

  “Unfortunately, yeah. So I haven’t gotten to talk to him yet.”

  She shook her head, clearly shaken. “Jesus.”

  “She have a boyfriend?” I asked as we started walking again. “Meredith?”

  Kelly nodded. “Yeah. A kid I don’t care for all that much. Remember I said how Chuck looked me in the eye? This kid never looks me in the eye.” She grimaced. “I hate when kids are like that.”

  “Know his name?”

  She pulled her keys from her bag and opened her car door. “Sure. Derek Weathers.”

  NINETEEN

  It wasn’t a coincidence that Meredith’s boyfriend shared the same name with the kid that had been tailing me in Seaport Village. I was sure of that. Not when I’d already spotted Meg, her teammate, with Matt, who’d been Derek’s sidekick in following me.

  The next morning, I stopped by the hospital. Chuck’s eyes were still closed, he wasn’t moving and the doctor told me there’d been no change. I pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat, holding his hand, feeling awkward and unsure of what else I was supposed to do.

>   Doubts were creeping into my head, like feathers brushing my skin. Why had he been spending so much time with Meredith Jordan? It was one thing to work with her on her game, but both Stricker and Kelly Rundles indicated they had at least considered the thought that something else was going on between them. I didn’t want to believe that Chuck put himself in that kind of situation. I felt guilty for considering it, but it was getting harder to ignore the possibility.

  I squeezed his hand, willing him to wake up and tell me the truth, tell me what he’d gotten himself into.

  But he didn’t, and after awhile, I left.

  ***

  I left a message for Jane Wiley, letting her know that I was still plugging away and asking her to call me if she knew anything more about either Chuck’s assault or the charges the Jordans had made. I didn’t tell her that the plugging hadn’t gotten me anywhere yet.

  I decided to head back to Jon Jordan’s home. I wanted to know how Gina Coleman knew Chuck and why she’d recommended him for the coaching job.

  The huge gates were in place and I pressed the button on the intercom.

  “I promise not to hurt you this time,” Gina Coleman said over the speaker. I could tell she was smiling.

  “Thanks.”

  I waited at the gates for a couple of minutes until she arrived in her BMW. The gates opened like a bird’s wings and she got out of the car. She was in workout clothes and covered in sweat. I might’ve found her attractive if she hadn’t dropped me to the pavement the first time we met.

  “Wanna shake my hand?” she asked, smiling.

  “Not really.”

  “Then why are you back?”

  “You gonna call Jordan and tell him I’m here?” I asked. “He threatened me with much bodily harm.”

  “He does that. A lot.” She shook her head, disapproving. “But he’s not here right now, so you’re alright.”

  “But if he drove up here in the next ten seconds…”

  “I’d do what he told me,” she said. “I work for him. Bottom line.”

  “Great guy.”

  “No. Great salary.”

  Figured I couldn’t argue with that.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew Chuck?” I asked.

  She leaned against the hood of her car, the sweat on her forehead and arms sparkling in the sun. “Didn’t know I was supposed to.”

  I didn’t say anything, letting my silence tell her that answer was worthless.

  She stared at me for a moment, then looked down at her shoes, pretending to inspect the laces. Finally, she caved. “I work for Jon. It wasn’t my place to start telling you things.”

  “You do know Chuck, though?” I asked.

  She thought about it, then nodded.

  “How?”

  She looked away from me, then looked back and said, “Park your car on the street.”

  When I hesitated, she said, “Don’t worry. He’s out of town today. It’ll be fine.”

  I did as she said. She swung up next to me in the BMW and I got in the passenger side. The car smelled like brand new leather and clean carpeting, as if it had just arrived from Germany. Gina smelled like a mixture of salt and soap.

  She hadn’t answered my question, though.

  “How?” I repeated.

  She made a U-turn and we headed thru the gates and onto the Jordan property. “We went to elementary school together,” she said. “Then junior high.”

  I never thought of Chuck having had a life before I’d met him and it was odd to hear someone say they knew him when I hadn’t.

  “His dad was at the air station at El Toro. Then he was moved to Coronado.”

  “El Toro? In Orange County?”

  She drove us down a winding, hilly road lined with thick shrubbery. “Yeah. We lived in San Clemente. He lived across the street from me.”

  “I didn’t know he lived up there,” I said, as much to myself as to Gina. “He never mentioned it. I knew his dad was transferred to Coronado, but I just assumed they’d always been in San Diego.”

  The road forked amidst a grove of massive eucalyptus trees and she veered to the left. “We used to play together at the park across the street from our houses. Every afternoon, we’d come home from school and head over. I’d go down the slide and he’d jump off of it.”

  Now that sounded like Chuck.

  We pulled up to a single-story ranch house with a terracotta roof and walls of expansive windows. She shut off the engine and we got out.

  Chuck took me to our seventh grade dance,” she said, smiling, walking toward the front door. “It was a big deal. First junior high dance and all.” She paused, put her hand on the door. “And he was my first kiss.”

  I was trying to picture Chuck as a gawky seventh grader, figuring out how to put the moves on the girl he liked. If the situation had been different, I would’ve burst out laughing.

  Gina pushed opened the door and we stepped inside. It wasn’t Jon Jordan's house. It was a gym and the only thing it was missing was a membership desk. Lots of gleaming dumbbells and high-end machines, mirrors on the walls. Cool air-conditioning washed over me as I shut the door.

  “I was in the middle of lifting when you showed up,” she said. “You mind if I finish?”

  I shook my head.

  She slid onto a bench and lowered herself beneath a bar that held a large plate and a small plate on each end. A hundred-and-ten pounds by my count. She wrapped her fingers carefully around the bar. “When he told me they were moving, it was like the end of the world. You know, everything is bigger and exaggerated at that point in your life and it was awful. He was my best friend, my first boyfriend and it broke my heart.”

  She lifted the bar out of the rack and went up and down with it eight times, the muscles in her arms and shoulders expanding and contracting with each movement, quiet grunts of exertion echoing in the room. She wasn’t doing it for show, but I was impressed.

  “So you stayed in touch over the years?” I asked.

  She set the bar back in the rack, but kept her hands on it and exhaled several times, staring upward. “Not really. When he first moved, we called each other and stuff the first couple of weeks. But then it was just…different. High school and everything. There was no email or IMs back then. Neither of us could drive and it felt like he was a million miles away.” Her hands tightened around the bar. “Then about three months ago, he called me. Don’t know how he found me, how he got the number and I didn’t care. It was like we picked up right where we’d left off.” She lifted the bar out of the rack and held it high. “And that’s silly, because it was junior freaking high. But still, I heard his voice and he didn’t even have to say his name. I knew it was him.”

  It was strange to hear about Chuck’s life from someone else. We’d been best friends for twenty years, but hearing her story made me feel like I’d only known a fraction of him.

  She knocked out eight more reps, set the bar back in the rack and sat up, her face pink. “It was really good to see him.” She nodded again, reaffirming her words, and took a deep breath, staring at her hands. “Really good. We started hanging out, dinner, things like that.” She glanced in my direction. “He told me about you. About Lauren and Elizabeth.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”

  The familiar awkwardness and hurt hit me square in the stomach. “Thanks.”

  She stood and pulled the plates off the bar, re-stacking them on the pegs on the side of the rack. “He really missed you,” she said. “He understood, but he missed you. And he looked for Elizabeth, too.”

  Something jabbed in my gut. Lauren had said the same thing.

  She placed smaller plates on the bar. She adjusted the back of the bench upward, so instead of flat, it was on an incline. “Every morning. Checked websites, message boards, things like that. I think he really wanted to be the one to call you and say he’d found her.”

  My mouth went dry. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Anyway, he was working construc
tion, but he was bored,” Gina said, sliding onto the inclined bench. “He wanted to do something else, but he wasn’t sure what. I had just talked with Kelly and knew she needed a coach. I thought he’d be perfect.”

  “And he liked it?” I asked, happy to steer the conversation away from me.

  “No,” she said, grabbing the bar and lifting it out of the rack. “He loved it.”

  TWENTY

  Gina spent twenty more minutes working her way around the gym, her intensity constant as she moved from machine to machine. I watched her, sitting there quietly, still thinking about Chuck, wondering what had caused him to call Gina out of the blue and what had caused him to fall in love with coaching. The questions were forming in my head by the second, but I couldn’t clear my mind enough to ask the right ones.

  When Gina was finished, she grabbed a towel from a table beneath one of the windows and buried her face in it.

  “I haven’t spoken to Meredith,” she said, shooting me a look.

  “Doesn’t she live at the house?”

  “She does,” she said. “But Jordan’s been keeping her away from everyone and that includes me. And it’s a big house.”

  “Jordan know about your relationship with Chuck?”

  She shook her head. “No. He stays out of my personal life.”

  “If you asked Jordan to get Chuck the coaching spot, why hasn’t Jordan fired you?” I asked.

  She sat down on the floor, her legs out in front of her and reached for her feet. “I think it’s crossed his mind. But, Jon is…brutally rational most of the time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She pressed herself downward, nearly touching her nose to her knees. She arched her back and came up slowly. “It means he knows that he’s better off with me than without me.”

  “You’re that good?”

  She smiled but it looked more like a cringe. “I’m better than good. I’m not saying I’m safe, though. Things don’t turn out the way he wants, I could very well find myself out on my ass. As rational as he is, he will lash out.”